AMD A10-7890K Review and Ratings

Editors’ Rating:

Our Verdict:
AMD's new top-end CPU/GPU gets a processor uptick, along with good graphics performance for a chip in the $150 price range. But gamers with space in their case for a dedicated graphics card may want to consider that option. Read More…

AMD A10-7890K Review

For several years now, Intel has held an advantage over its chip rival AMD when it comes to powerful consumer processors. AMD's top-end FX chips, notably the AMD FX-9590 and AMD FX-8370, are suited to taking on their Intel Core i5 counterparts, but not any recent chip with an "i7" its name.

Down toward the cheaper end of the chip heap, though, value matters more than absolute performance. And that's where things are a lot more promising for AMD—especially if gaming is important. Due largely to the fact that modern consoles have multiple addressable cores, we're seeing a growing number of AAA PC-game titles that prefer, or in some cases even demand, four cores (or four addressable threads) to run.

The lowest-price current-generation Intel chip that meets this four-thread requirement is the $125 Core i3-6100, while AMD offers up an excellent alternative in the Athlon X4-880K. The latter chip is starting to show up at online retailers for under $100. We also had no issues overclocking the AMD chip to an impressive 4.5GHz with the company's improved (and not at all noisy) stock cooler. (It's a relative of the AMD Wraith Cooler we reviewed a few weeks back.)

But the Athlon chip requires the use of a dedicated graphics card. Unlike the Core i3, it lacks on-chip graphics, which many users will prefer for the sake of simplicity (and for the cost savings). But a graphics card isn't always an option when you're building or upgrading a slim, extremely compact system. For those types of users, AMD has a whole line of chips (the company calls them "APUs," for its combined CPU/GPU) as well, including the new-for-2016, $115 A10-7860K, and the flagship that we're looking at here: the AMD A10-7890K, roughly $150.

The A10-7890K delivers better CPU and graphics performance than the A10-7860K if you're after the best of what's available from an APU. But the lesser A10-7860K sticks surprisingly close to it, given the $35 price difference. And the fact is, the A10-7860K is rated to sip substantially less power than the 95-watt A10-7890K.

If you want to build an extremely compact system for gaming and general-purpose computing, AMD's latest top-end APU is a solid option, though we feel the A10-7860K is a better overall value. And if gaming is your aim and your case has room for a dedicated card, you could get much better performance for not much more dough. You might opt instead for one of AMD's lower-cost Athlon X4 chips and a roughly $100 dedicated graphics card like Nvidia's GeForce GTX 750 Ti or an AMD Radeon R7 360.

Features

The A10-7890K comes clocked out of the box at an impressive 4.1GHz, with the ability to jump as high as 4.3GHz under the right thermal conditions. It's another chip in the company's refresh of the "Kaveri" line, which AMD calls "Godavari." But there's nothing new here in the way of architecture or other hardware features versus earlier chips in the line.

Here's how the A10-7860K's specs stack up against several of the company's recent APUs, including the lower-power A10-7860K. As you can see, the A10-7890K is a modest step up from the AMD A10-7870K that we looked at in the fall of 2015.

The architecture and FM2+ socket here aren't new, and the graphics cores and frequency are the same as we saw on the A10-7870K in 2015. So while you should see slightly better CPU performance with the newer chip, compared to the A10-7870K, graphics performance should be the same. Given that the A10-7870K sells for about $15 less than the A10-7890K, that makes the older model a better value for gamers. The more interesting chip in this bunch is arguably the A10-7860K, which gets most of the graphics and CPU performance as the top-end models, at a much lower thermal design power (TDP) rating of 65 watts.

Still, the A10-7890K is the highest stock-clocked APU we've seen, and AMD has the overclocking angle covered, as well. The company is boxing the A10-7890K (as well as the AMD FX-8370 and AMD FX-8350) with its new Wraith Cooler. It's a stock cooler that is designed to handle TDPs of up to 125 watts, so there's lots of cooling overhead with these APUs.

As we noted when we reviewed the cooler, the Wraith Cooler has an attractive backlit AMD logo, and it is exceedingly quiet for a stock cooling solution. This cooler doesn't come with the lesser A10-7860K, but that chip still ships with a cooler similar to the Wraith, just minus the lighting and fan shroud. Even the basic AMD Athlon X4 880K now ships with a nice cooler with a flashy red fan.

It's nice to see AMD adding value to its already value-oriented parts. Unless you want to reach extreme levels of overclocking or the quietest possible performance, you should be happy with the cooling solutions that come in the box with these APUs.

Performance

Before we jump into the benchmarking blow-by-blow, it's important to point out that with the recent mix of Intel and AMD chips, we took this opportunity to switch over to Windows 10 for our CPU testing. We tested the AMD A10-7890K, A10-7860K, Athlon X4 880K, A10-7870K, and Intel's Core i3-6100 all under Windows 10, while the older chips here, the AMD FX-8370 and Intel's Core i5-6600K, were tested under Windows 8.1.

This means the performance numbers of the Core i5 and AMD FX chips aren't strictly comparable to those of the rest of the bunch. But those are also much costlier and more powerful CPUs, and they are listed here more to provide a broad reference than strictly as competition.

And while it's impossible to ensure that everything is exactly comparable between Intel and AMD platforms, we tested all of these chips with a Serial ATA-based solid-state boot drive and 16GB of RAM. And to give the integrated graphics of these chips the best possible advantage, we tested the Core i3 with its DDR4 Corsair RAM running at its fastest rated speed (2,800MHz), while the AMD-based systems were tested using AMD-branded DDR3 RAM running at its top rated speed of 2,100MHz. RAM speed is important mostly for integrated graphics, as it gives the chip more throughput to push pixels.

Cinebench R15

We started off our testing with Cinebench R15, an industry-standard benchmark test that taxes all available cores of a processor to measure raw CPU muscle.

On this first test, the A10-7890K edged out the A10-7860K, but landed substantially behind Intel's current-generation entry-level Core i3. Also, the $100 Athlon X4 880K was roughly even with the top-end A10 chip here; that's the budget chip that lacks onboard graphics.

iTunes 10.6 Encoding Test

We then switched over to our venerable iTunes Encoding Test, using version 10.6 of iTunes. This test taxes only a single CPU core, as much legacy software does.

This test tends to favor Intel chips, because it isn't fully threaded. So, unsurprisingly, the Core i3-6100 looked very impressive here, finishing not far behind the $250 Core i5-6600K. Once again, the A10-7890K managed to edge out the A10-7860K, but it landed about even with the Athlon X4 880K.

Handbrake 0.9.9

In this 4K video-crunching test, we use Handbrake version 0.9.9 and task the CPUs to convert a 12-minute-and-14-second 4K .MOV file (the 4K showcase short film Tears of Steel) into a 1080p MPEG-4 video.

The A10-7890K looked more impressive here, finishing only about a minute behind Intel's Core i3-6100, and minutes ahead of both the Athlon X4 880K and A10-7860K. Still, if you're going to crunch large video files (or large files of any kind) on a regular basis, it's clear that the Intel Core i5 and AMD FX chips on the right end of the chart are worthwhile investments.

Photoshop CS6

Next up is our Photoshop CS6 benchmark, which taxes the CPUs by performing several complex filter operations on a large benchmark-standard image we use.

Here again, the Intel Core i3 and i5 easily dominated, finishing far ahead of any of the AMD chips—even the FX-8370. The A10-7890K did, though, manage to outpace both the lesser A10 and the Athlon X4.

POV Ray 3.7

Last in our CPU-centric tests, we ran the POV Ray benchmark using the "All CPUs" setting. This test challenges all available cores to render a complex photo-realistic image using ray tracing.

The A10-7890K finished our CPU tests on a strong note here, besting the Core i3 by a handful of seconds, and easily finishing ahead of all other chips in our comparison chart, save for the $250 Core i5-6600K.

Graphics Tests

As noted earlier, the AMD A10-7890K's on-chip graphics, running at 866MHz, are exactly the same as the solution on the A10-7870K that we tested in 2015. So while we know what to expect compared to older chips, we were interested to see how AMD's latest APU would stack up when gaming against the lower-end A10-7860K (with its graphics cores running at 757MHz), and the Intel HD 530 graphics on Intel's current low-end Core i3-6100 "Skylake" chip.

Note that the FX and Athlon chips aren't included in these charts, as they lack any on-chip graphics at all, requiring the use of a dedicated card.

3DMark (Cloud Gate)

We started out our graphics testing with the 2013 version of Futuremark's 3DMark, specifically its Cloud Gate subtest, which is designed to measure a system's overall graphics capabilities.

Integrated graphics have long been AMD's strong suit, and that shows here as well. Looking specifically at the Graphics Score, which aims to isolate solely the graphics silicon, the A10-7890K edged out even the Core i5-6600K, while putting a bit of hurt on the Core i3. Still, the A10-7860K isn't far behind, especially given that it costs less and should draw significantly less power than the A10-7890K.

Tomb Raider (2013)

To get a sense of how these chips can handle modern gaming, we started off our game testing with the 2013 reboot of the Tomb Raider franchise at a couple of resolutions, first at the Normal detail setting, then on the much-more-demanding Ultra preset.

Here we get our first look at actual frame rates, and the A10-7890K still impresses. AMD's flagship APU bested both Intel chips, particularly at the higher detail settings. It couldn't deliver playable frame rates at 1080p (1,920x1,080 resolution) and the higher settings, but none of these chips pulled off that feat. With the A10-7890K, you'll be able to play this title at 1080p and medium detail settings, or at high detail settings with the resolution reduced. You can take your pick.

Sleeping Dogs

Next, we ran the open-world action title Sleeping Dogs. This game launched in 2012, but at high settings and resolutions, it's still demanding enough to push even moderate gaming PCs to their limits. We stuck to the Medium detail setting.

On this test, the A10-7890K looked perhaps its best against the Intel-based alternatives, and was easily able to keep frame rates smooth even at 1080p. Intel's Core i5 did so, as well, but delivered lower frame rates overall, while costing about $100 more than the A10. That being said, once again, the A10-7860K stuck fairly close to the higher-end A10 on this test, which arguably makes that chip a better value considering it costs less and has a lower power rating.

A Word About Overclocking

Also, unlike the the Core i3 chip, AMD's A10 chips are unlocked for overclocking. You can focus your clock-tuning efforts either on the CPU or graphics side of the spectrum. Given time constraints (we're testing three other chips alongside this one), we didn't attempt to overclock this chip. But it's likely users will be able to achieve modest gains.

Still, if significantly better graphics performance is what you're after, we'd strongly suggest stepping up to a dedicated graphics card rather than counting on the gains of any kind of overclock here. Even a modest dedicated card should provide much better performance than what we saw from any of the chips here.

Conclusion

The AMD A10-7890K is a good chip if you want the best CPU and graphics performance you can get in the $150-to-$200 price range, and you specifically don't want to use a dedicated card. But if you're okay with sacrificing a few frames per second here or there for a lower price and less heat output and power consumption, we think the A10-7860K is a better value. When we wrote this in late April 2016, the lesser A10-7860K cost about $35 less than the $150 A10-7890K, and it wasn't substantially slower than the flagship A10 in any way that you're likely to notice outside of a benchmark test.

If gaming is your priority and the system you're upgrading or building has room for a dedicated graphics card, you're better off going that route—especially if you can spend just a little more. You could get a quad-core Athlon X4 860K and an Nvidia GeForce GTX 750 Ti graphics card together for about $170 or $180. That combination should give you similar CPU performance to the A10 chip, and (as an example) more than double the frame rates in Tomb Raider at 1080p on the Ultra setting. When we tested the GeForce GTX 750 Ti in 2014, it delivered 47.5 frames per second (fps) at those settings, while the A10-7890K pushed out 21.4fps.

Opting for that card or an AMD Radeon R7 370, paired with a sub-$100 Athlon chip, is well worth paying a little more money for, if you're after the best gaming on a tight budget. And if you just want playable frame rates with integrated graphics, most users should be happy stepping down to the $115 A10-7860K.

Also, if you're building a new system today, it's worth noting that the FM2+ socket is very likely near the end of its run, as AMD has promised that a unifying "AM4" socket will be arriving sometime in 2016. For available details as of this writing, check out this update on AMD's Zen and AM4 on our sibling site, ExtremeTech. If you want to build a system that you can drop a more powerful CPU/GPU chip into a few years down the road, the smart move would be to wait to see what—if anything—gets announced at the Computex trade show at the end of May/beginning of June 2016.

That show often sees major announcements surrounding PC components, so we wouldn't be surprised to learn more about AMD's new chip platform around that time, not to mention graphics news from Nvidia and AMD.

AMD A10-7890K

Our Verdict:
AMD's new top-end CPU/GPU gets a processor uptick, along with good graphics performance for a chip in the $150 price range. But gamers with space in their case for a dedicated graphics card may want to consider that option.

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